Reviewed: June 8, 2004
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Activision

Developer
LTI Gray Matter (PC Port)
Luxoflux Corp.

Released: May 14, 2004
Genre: Action
Players: 4
ESRB: Mature

8
8
8
8
8.1

Recommended System:

For those of you with PC blinders on who have no idea what this game is about, allow me to recap. On the surface, True Crime: Streets of L.A. looks and plays very similar to Grand Theft Auto - you drive around, often recklessly, then you can hop out of your car and shoot people. Unlike GTA, True Crime is played from a cop’s perspective taking many of the core concepts of the GTA franchise and evolving them into something much greater than the sum of its parts.

If I had to actually compare True Crime to any other game it would be Mafia. Where GTA gave you a virtual blank canvas and the freedom to paint your criminal career however and whenever you saw fit, True Crime follows the more linear approach of storytelling with defined goals and mission objectives. Sure, you are still free to wander the massive city of L.A. recreated in stunning detail with several hundred square miles, but the experience isn’t as rewarding when you deviate from the narrative.

True Crime has some very ambitious design elements, mixing in plenty of driving, shooting, foot chases, exploration, martial arts, and even a clever blending of RPG elements that allow you to have your lead character evolve throughout the game. The game diverges into several paths with multiple endings based on your performance. Perform your duties poorly and you can finish this game in less than six hours. Stay on your toes and you can prepare to spend a week of solid gaming in virtual L.A.

Whether to tempt console owners to buy another copy of the game or simply reward PC gamers for their undying patience, the PC version of True Crime is bursting at the seams with bonus content. We start with five new multiplayer modes—The Chase, Dojo Master, Street Racing, Crime Stoppers and Battle Master, all exclusive to the PC. Plus, PC gamers can utilize new weapons such as rocket launchers, crossbows or bats and in lieu of the custom soundtrack feature of the Xbox the PC version comes with 30 new songs to bolster the already-massive music library. Still not enough? How about some new character skins like Jeanette from the upcoming Vampire: Bloodlines, Officer Dick from THUG, Rikimaru from Tenchu and of course Snoop is back.

Karma plays an important part on how the overall game flows and unfolds. If you follow proper police procedures you get good karma. If you shoot first and cuff later you slip close toward the “dark side”. Yes, it’s a system very much like the Jedi Knight games only this time it actually affects the total game and not just a few aspects of it.

As previously mentioned, there are some RPG elements to Nick. You can visit the Dojo, shooting range, or driving school to improve your existing abilities and learn new moves and such. Again, you are free to do this whenever you want, but sooner or later you are going to need to get this story started.

The game is broken down into episodes with multiple missions in each. When you complete enough of the missions in one episode you are then allowed to move on to the next and further the story. The nice thing here is that you aren’t required to complete every mission, so if you get stuck on a particularly difficult mission you can skip it and move on.

Skipping or failing a mission results in the story unfolding differently, which isn’t a bad thing. It means you get to see some new movies and you can play the game through multiple times and get a fresh experience. Those of you who manage to complete every mission in an episode will get a bonus level that rewards you with your choice of a new car, weapon, or combat move. If you aren’t a perfect cop then there are other ways to earn these rewards.

There is a whole lot of content in True Crime and it is carefully balanced so you don’t fall into a rut or lose track of the main objective. To do well in the game you have to improve your skills and abilities by using the training facilities. But to enter these facilities you have to earn shields by doing normal police work, either story related missions or just random radio calls you receive while driving around town. This clever balancing act disguises what is otherwise a linear progression of missions by giving you the freedom to do what you want when you want.

Those of you wanting to rush through the game will find you can skip a lot of the training but in doing so you will only cheat yourself out of a very rewarding gameplay experience. By continually improving your skills you will increase your driving ability, shooting precision, and combat skills become a more effective crime fighter. By doing a bit of preemptive work you can ultimately make the game easier to play.

Karma is an ongoing issue but only comes into play further into the game where you must have good karma to continue to the desired ending of the game. Exploring the dark side of the story is certainly interesting enough to check out and just one of the many ways True Crime extends its replay value. You can even turn rogue cop and get the SWAT team chasing you down to a rather unsatisfying conclusion to your career.

Karma, much like everything else in True Crime, is a careful balancing act. Early on you will probably slip into the dark side as you make mistakes, run over pedestrians, shoot an innocent bystander, etc. but you can just as easily repair this damage with a little “extra credit”. Driving around town and solving random crimes will slowly build up that good cop rating.

L.A. is an interesting mix of having a huge 240 square-mile detailed city that is strangely under-populated, both in traffic and pedestrians. One thing that is impressive is that the traffic is very good about obeying the signals. This is good in that you can predict what the other cars are going to do but annoying when you are in hot pursuit and are forced to stop behind a pack of cars at a red light.

There is plenty of criminal activity going on thanks to the random crime generator. Your radio will constantly being going off about some robbery, carjacking, mugging, or other illegal activity. Getting to the scene, stopping the crime, and peacefully apprehending the suspect(s) will give you good karma and reward you with valuable shields you can use at the training facilities. Some crimes include multiple perps and you have to catch them all to get the credit.

Criminals are very intelligent in True Crime. They will fight back until they deem it necessary to run in which case they are likely to commandeer a vehicle and make their dash for freedom. Foot chases quickly turn into high-speed pursuits and you get to shoot out tires or disable the car and resume the chase on foot.

The final thing to discuss is the controls, which are even more awkward than the console versions. First, there is no support for a gamepad - something that is pretty much required when porting a console game to the PC, and while I don't have a problem with the keyboard mappings those that do will find it a challenging endeavor to find out how and where to reconfigure the commands. The problem I do have with the mouse and keyboard controls is a total lack of precision, especially for driving.

Targeting is pretty slick, I must admit. You tap the left mouse button to quickly fire, but if you want to take a more careful aim you hold down the button to slow down time (a nod to "bullet time") and now you can shoot specific body or car parts. Of course this precision level of aiming requires a lot of practice and RPG-like stat building at the shooting range, just like the dojo prepares you with advanced combat moves.

True Crime has a fairly involved fighting system with plenty of kicks, punches, and advanced combos, but these seem a bit awkward when playing with a keyboard. All three mouse buttons are used for punch, kick, and jump kicks, but to do advanced moves you have to combine those moves with commands from the keyboard. It helps to have a third hand. The WADS cluster is used for moving and driving and the mouse is used for camera view and steering. The only problem here is the mouse seems a bit sluggish and the digital nature of the keyboard (full steer or no steer) makes driving a lot less fun than it was on the console. And with no analog or pressure sensitive button for the handbrake, you had better just avoid using it at all.

As previously mentioned, the PC offers five multiplayer modes which probably sounded better on paper than they ultimately turned out. On the plus side, you get a ton of characters, cars, and customizable features to tailor the game to each player, but the game modes simply aren't that fun and basically just end up being variations of street racing on very empty streets. This must be what L.A. looks like after a neutron bomb goes off. There are some pedestrian combat modes but these are also not very fun and made even more annoying by some camera problems.

The only redeeming mode for multiplayer is "The Beat", only because this takes the crime-solving concept of the single player game and has you competing with other "cops" to see who can make the most arrests in a certain time limit. I was surprised at how many people were actually playing this game online and True Crime fully supports GameSpy so hooking up with other "officers" is no problem.

The game world is very dynamic. If you can see it on the screen it most likely can be damaged or destroyed in some way. There are plenty of particle effects, smoke, fire, and gratuitous damage to the environment when you drive your car through something or throw a perp into a table or chair that smashes to bits.

Character animation is amazing, especially in the martial arts combat. Nick performs a variety of moves smoothly and they chain together in some convincing combos. The cars also move with a weighty feel careening around corners and bouncing up over curbs and they show real-time damage. The physics engine is realistic enough to keep the game fun and believable.

The cutscenes all use game graphics for seamless integration of story and gameplay. Everything is shot with very cinematic camera angles and movements to recreate that movie experience. The lip-synching is dead-on with the professional cast of voice actors who deliver the thoughtful and convincing script giving the entire presentation a very polished look.

All is not shiny glitz and glamour in L.A. however, and True Crime is not without its fair share of glitches and oddities. As cinematic as the camera is during the movies it can often get hung up during gameplay. This leads to some glaring clipping issues that will have you seeing through buildings or even viewing an endless void beyond the “world”. Sometime a solid object gets between Nick and the camera and instead of going transparent like most games you simply are unable to see the action until you move. This was an issue on the consoles and apparently wasn't fixed for the PC.

There is also a distinct lack of original cars and pedestrian models on the street at any given time. Obviously, the consoles had to duplicate cars and people due to limited RAM but I've got a gigabyte standing by and this game should be scaling the population to my system. Instead, you are likely to see the streets filled (and I use the word "filled" loosely) with only a few repeating models of cars and people. And even when the city is at its busiest it never approaches the congestion I've witnessed on my yearly trips to L.A.

The all-star cast features voices too numerous to mention but when Christopher Walken kicks things off with the opening narration you know you are in for something special. The script is professionally written and even the random lines of the pedestrians and suspects are varied and often humorous. The entire package is right on par with GTA quality but I still enjoyed the conversations and cutscene content in Vice City more than I did here.

Sound effects are all very nice and range from authentic engine roars, gunshots, and the thuds of kicking and punching to the smashing of wood, screeching of tires, and plenty of ambient city noise to bring L.A. to life. The game supports DirectSound but there was no obvious support for advanced 3D such as Dolby Digital or EAX HD. The game still sounds great, but not nearly as encompassing as the Xbox mix.

Much like GTA’s hidden packages and unique jumps, there are plenty of hidden (well not exactly hidden, more off-the-beaten-path) bonuses and fetch quests. One of the more popular ones includes finding 30 bones hidden around L.A. to unlock Snoop Dogg as a playable character.

True Crime is a substantial game full of quality content with a few notable problems that you can eventually work through or around. The multiplayer offering is admittedly a letdown but at least it's there, so the PC has a slight edge over the console version in that department. Combined with the lower price point of the PC version, and True Crime offers a respectable bang for your buck.

This version of L.A. is a living, breathing city where your actions have a direct bearing on immediate events and could even impact the story much further than you can possibly imagine. It’s this opened-ended type of storytelling mixed with diverse gameplay that makes True Crime: Streets of L.A. a decent console port and one of the better action games you can play on the PC.